We over-focus on results
Exacerbating the problem are our goal-fixated cultures.
Again, this is a hanger-on from the world of personal
development. For years self-help gurus and business
consultants have whipped us into a frenzy with goalsetting exercises and experiences that are analogous
to facing our fear — such as walking on hot coals or
performing a ‘trust fall’ — all while they drum into us a
mantra of a no-excuses results obsession.
Given the fervour with which the corporate world
has embraced this kind of thinking, you’d expect
organisations around the planet to be ridiculously
over-achieving and ticking off milestones and goals
like crazy. But that’s not what’s happening. In fact, the
gap between our goals and our achievement of those
goals is glaring. In 2011, researchers at US management
consulting firm Bain & Company found that among
the organisations they surveyed, a mere 20 per cent
achieve their annual goals and expectations. Once
again, as we’ve seen in our personal lives, this is often
interpreted as the failure of the individuals involved
while our systems and the process of goal setting itself
remain unquestioned.
At sales conferences around the world, inspirational
speakers with big teeth and a disturbingly psychotic
amount of enthusiasm pump up salespeople, telling
them to focus on results with pithy maxims such as,
‘Don’t make excuses, make results’.
The same empty platitudes are often applied in every
sphere of life. To experience this phenomenon for
yourself, simply hire a personal trainer or a life coach.
One of the favourite anecdotes of the goal-setting
fraternity is the 1953 Yale goal study. The story has it
that 1953’s graduating class at Yale was surveyed to see
who had written goals and who had not. It transpired
that only 3 per cent of students had written down goals.
Years later, when the class was contacted again to check
on their progress since leaving college, it was revealed
that the 3 per cent with written goals had eclipsed the
personal wealth of the other 97 per cent put together.
What makes this story interesting is just how powerful
stories are in building corporate cultures and strategy,
but mostly what makes it interesting is that it is
completely made up. Yale has repeatedly denied
any knowledge of this survey in 1953 or in any other
graduating year.
Yet this story has been repeated so many times by
so many different sources that it has fallen into the
category of belief. As a result, goal setting remains
the holy grail of corporate and personal strategy, but
more than that, it is often the only strategy employed,
which is not to say that goal setting isn’t useful or that
it doesn’t lead to success. In fact, we annually set goals
for our organisation and staff and use benchmarks of
accomplishment to monitor our progress. The
issue occurs when it is seen as a single-bullet strategy.
Buddhists refer to this results obsession as ‘attachment’
and they frame attachment as one of the roots of
disharmony. We prefer to see it more as one strategic
strand of many that are available. In other words, a clear
goal or result is useful, but it may become a limitation
as better options and information become available.
A great example of this is the Indian story of how
to catch a monkey. It is said that in order to catch a
monkey you have to stake a coconut filled with peanuts
to the ground. The coconut must have an opening in
it just small enough for a monkey to slip its hand into,
so that when it reaches inside, grabs the peanuts and
forms a fist, its hand becomes too large to come back
out again. The monkey becomes so fixated by the goal
that its hand becomes stuck and therefore it is trapped.
(The story doesn’t explain why you’d want to catch a
monkey; we’ll leave it to you to add your own editorial
flavour.) What’s interesting about this story is that it’s a
metaphor for how modern goal obsession has affected
some of the actual results we’ve achieved. Poor work–
life balance, chronic health issues, family breakups,
environmental disasters and artificially stimulated truck
drivers falling asleep at the wheel are all examples
of goals getting in the way of success. In reality, we
actually have very little control over results in our lives.
The drunk driver who fails to yield as we approach
an intersection, the earthquake that claims our home
and even the client who fires us because their marriage
is on the rocks and they feel a need to assert power in
at least one aspect of their lives: all of these examples,
despite the self-help industry’s protestations to the
contrary, lie beyond our control.
However, what we can control — and this is where we
should look for control — is our behaviour and our
environment.